Design choices that encourage cooperative group play in MMORPGs... what are your favorite examples?

Iselin

Without getting into PVP aspects and thinking only of the PVE part of games, I've often thought that MMORPGs are still in their infancy with respect to how games are designed without doing enough to reflect in their game mechanics the typical overarching story that we're up against it and we'd better work together to deal with it.

Even my current favorite, ESO, is very thin on group-encouraging, community building design elements. They have static dolmen casual group events and world bosses that are (now once again) group events in the overland world. But the bulk of its design fosters a solo journey through the world. That their stories, questing and presentation are IMO, enjoyable and top notch is beside the point because the overall PVE part of the game is mostly solo content. It's you against Molag Bal not so much all of us against him as it should be.

I contrast that with games like Warhammer online with its public quest system, Rift with it's large zone events and GW2 which are games that did get it and tried to build from the ground up to make drop-in cooperative play the main focus of PVE. Whether they succeeded or went far enough is up for debate but at least they were clearly trying.

How about you? What are your favorite examples of attempts to make MMORPG PVE overland gameplay more about "us" and less about "I"?

waynejr2

City of Heroes  Rikti Invasions.

Iselin

waynejr2 said:

City of Heroes  Rikti Invasions.

Never played COH so I just read up about those... yeah, that's the sort of thing MMOs need more of.

Kyleran

Well I recall when AQ40 was introduced in WOW so long ago the entire server had to work together to open the gates by donating the resources or something like that.

Another WOW example, I think it was at Cata launch there was some kick arse dragon that would burn towns, npcs and even players in them. (my newly created warrior was definitely a victim of this a few times).

 I think this occurred until someone on the server managed to beat him the first time.  (only played for a month, so not sure of accuracy of this)

Scorchien

UO had great Town invasions back in the day , was helluva lotta fun as hordes of Orcs etc. assaulted the town , Dozens and Dozens of players defending and dying ... .. Great fun

 AC also had some great community World events .. I remember once this Gigantic mob assaulting a town , As it traversed its way up a River , Archers and Mages unleashing a hail of fire from the banks and Bridges .. Melee assaulting its legs:) ..


 EQ also had some great events that would also get the community pulled together


                    They really need to try and bring events like this back , as it did give a strong sense of community

Kyleran

EVE has been dancing around with this some.

First it was the addition of the npc pirate incursions. When one drops in a system it debuffs player stats for several systems around it.  

Players have to band together in increasingly bigger fights until the final one to expel them once and for all, originally done with large (100+) fleets. (not sure if this has changed over the years)

More recently they had sleepers, dwellers in WHs start scouting K space. If left alone the seekers scan gates, stations and players with no harm.

If attacked they can drop valuable components useful for entosising structures, but they can also call in devestating sleeper battleships which make short work of all but the best fit carriers and dreads 

As agents of the mysterious Jove empire, I had always hoped their scans were going to lead to perhaps stronger incursions in K space but so far nothing like that has been implemented.

In fact I'd like the Jovians to attack everywhere in player space and actually be such a threat players would be forced to band together to maintain their space, or if successful push into long forbidden Jove systems which could contain untold mysteries and rewards.

Instead of player run "Burn Jita" (largest trade hub on game) imagine if suddenly the Jove Empire attacked with their sleeper agents and took and held the system with a massive fleet.

Players would be forced (or paid by asset holders) to "Free Jita"

PVPers would have a significant stake in helping or thwarting the recovery effort. 

waynejr2

Kyleran said:

Well I recall when AQ40 was introduced in WOW so long ago the entire server had to work together to open the gates by donating the resources or something like that.

Another WOW example, I think it was at Cata launch there was some kick arse dragon that would burn towns, npcs and even players in them. (my newly created warrior was definitely a victim of this a few times).

 I think this occurred until someone on the server managed to beat him the first time.  (only played for a month, so not sure of accuracy of this)

I loved the war effort.  Made thousands of gold which was a ton of money back then.

How about a faction wide efforts into building bridges or towers with portals to distant lands that are both major undertakings. 

rojoArcueid

Kyleran said:

Another WOW example, I think it was at Cata launch there was some kick arse dragon that would burn towns, npcs and even players in them. (my newly created warrior was definitely a victim of this a few times).

I think you are talking about Deathwing. He burned me to a crisp with a couple of characters on my way to light hope's chapel in eastern plaguelands.

Distopia

I've never really played an MMORPG that had strong group play TBH at least in PVE (outside of instanced encounters/dungeons).. The most grouping I've seen would be in DAOC or SWG, that said, neither did anything interesting with that focus. SWG's groups were dubbed solo groups for the most part ( you simply grouped up to get better mission payout but did most of the fighting solo).

 DAOC was a simple matter of clearing public dungeons, or clearing spawns. Nothing overly exciting.. Everything since hasn't done anything to make those aspects better IMO. The best system I've seen in recent years was SWTOR's story dialogue system that allowed groups to experience the story together and interject into it. Other than there's not much to write home about.

As for things like PQ's in GW2, ESO and WH. To me they're no different than popular POIs in SWG (fort Tusken, etc) , the only difference being no fighting over spawns and everyone getting a participation trophy.

Archlyte

Multi-person vehicles.

Mendel

I think the first thing any multi-player game needs to do to help achieve grouping is: slow down.  The pace of games is too fast.  There's no time between combat to do anything.  The games move at a pace where normal conversation is impossible with text, and this community seems to abhor the idea of VoIP to replace it.  Even then, the human brain has limits on how fast it can process input.  Games are capable of  generating that input faster than the human see-interpret-react speeds.

The grouping aspect is primarily a social experience, and the games do not provide any part of that.  It's all on the players to communicate.  Accepting a party invite doesn't guarantee the social interaction will be good.  Probably everyone hated the auto-loot-splitting algorithm from the start (EQ1 maybe???), and that's about the only 'automated' social convention attempted.  There are some automated 'group maneuvers' that are more see-interpret-react type things.

But no game really automates the process of combining a group's talents into a collective whole.  I'd love to see communal magic (ritual spells) requiring multiple casters to achieve a single effect.  But more likely, the idea of shared activity really fits the idea of a spaceship.  It should be relatively simple for a ship to generate 'tasks' for each department that must be done in sequence -- target selection, shift energy to appropriate systems, acquire target locks, fire the weapons, etc.  Instead of a single player doing everything, the individual steps need to be complex enough that a single person can't do it all.  A cannon was a powerful weapon in the American Civil War, but one person couldn't operate it by themselves.  All games to date have embraced this one operator mentality for all manner of technological devices.  That allows the game to present a challenge based on game speed rather than social conventions.

Slowing the game down would allow for game complexity at the same time improving the social aspects of the genre.

Azaron_Nightblade

My favorite up to date is probably still City of Heroes, and how it let you set the difficulty of them missions. Everyone also got their own loot, none of this crap where you have to deal with ninjas and the other assholes that tend to take the fun out of grouping.

waynejr2

Azaron_Nightblade said:

My favorite up to date is probably still City of Heroes, and how it let you set the difficulty of them missions. Everyone also got their own loot, none of this crap where you have to deal with ninjas and the other assholes that tend to take the fun out of grouping.

It was a great game for solo and group play.  Loved the newspaper and radio missions.  The Task forces were great too.  It is surprising that the difficulty slider hasn't become a mainstay of the industry.

Konfess

@Mendel, Everquest 2 had a combo system, that sounds like the group effect you stated.

I think WoW had the method down back in Vanilla.  At the end of the each starting zone, around player level 5 was a quest for an elite mob.  This was repeated in each zone, for example Hogger.  This forced or encouraged players to group.  grouping would then speed questing and leveling making it safer and faster.  The problem I had with this was reading quests, there was no time.  If I could go back and re-read quest logs as it came to me in a quest dialog box.  Maybe even re-experience cutscenes.  

Basically anything that makes out of combat activities viable in groups.  Activities like Harvesting, Looting, Exploring, and Screenshots must be made group friendly.  However that can be done.

In SWG, Grouping was a way of artificially boosting the difficult level of missions.  That were done solo.  Grouping should not suport solo game play.

I also felt LFG tools should include a player's quest list and maybe a desired quest group class make up.

Octagon7711

GW2 dynamic events.  It's grouping that supports solo play as well as world bosses.

Lerxst

The chaos the Asherons Call dungeons were in after a person would aggro all the mobs and then exit. "But that's not coop" you say? Try entering that dungeon solo after that and tell me you can do it solo :pleased:

refo18

GW2 expansion maps have great large group content that actually require coordination (although it has been nerfed and made easier).   As a Commander, you have to ask certain groups to defend points while you progress on the map with others, and also need small scavenger groups collecting items to bring back to bases to level them up...  if not you will not manage to get to the final tier of map progression.    Same goes with the maps that have 3 and/or 4 lanes, you have to be able to split people up depending on what masteries they have and have certain timing in completing tasks.    
 

As a Commander, its fun to test myself and see if I can get a group of strangers (usually 50+) to coordinate and work together for a common goal.  Its as close to PvE warfare as Ive come close too

VestigeGamer

For me, a few things come to mind.

- Classes.  Having players able to do everything by themselves promotes doing everything by themselves.

- GM Events.  Having a massively overpowered named boss or "invasion" will bring a server together.  Calls and "/tells" will go out.  Soon a whole mess of players are in that one zone, battling together.

- Actually Tough Monsters.  Having a "close combat" with a singular mob that is a "white con" (EQ type "Could go either way") is challenging.  Having "camps of monsters" (EQ Orc Camps come to mind) where soloing is impossible will bring players together, giving them a common goal.

- Limited Chat.  Having what we type in one zone go worldwide makes the whole world smaller.  On one hand, it does help in bringing players not in a specific zone into an event.  On the other, players tend to ignore local chat, some may be calling for help.

Overall, if an MMORPG makes it so players can solo, they more than likely will solo.  That's OK.  But it doesn't foster "Massively Multiplayer" interactions, which no single player game can accomplish.  I think there should be "solo content" that players can do when not involved with others, but the whole game?  May as well make a single player game.  It's easier to balance, more flexible with what it can do, and a hell of lot less expensive.

Po_gg

Iselin said:

waynejr2 said:

City of Heroes  Rikti Invasions.

Never played COH so I just read up about those... yeah, that's the sort of thing MMOs need more of.

Except they have it... and not only at Cryptic, though they're still using those a lot (heck Neverwinter started with the Valindra invasion right in the beta...), but the best ones are maybe in CO: Takofanes, the 3 big bosses, the Qliphothic nightmare (which was not only multi-staged like Takofanes, but also ended up in a whole new zone), all larger than Rikti was. Heck, even BH and his Mecha-Teddy is better in mechanics

AoC has the monthly world boss rampage, TSW the regular events and player-summoned world bosses, LotRO still has GM-run events (though not as frequent as it had in the past) and a few of them are not even focusing on the combat, which is a huge plus in my eyes. But, since you asked about the favourite, I think it's the latest Halloween in TSW.
Actually I wanted to make a post about it since weeks, but it would be too long so I kept delaying it   maybe I jump onto it now, and then attach the link here, if you're curious about a wide-scale community event (the first stage was similar to Rikti, but then it went much deeper both in combat and in investigation)

(took a while    http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/458351/samhain-2016#latest  )

Wizardry

Although often players will try to solo everything,FFXI has all the elements of grouping ideas from perhaps the  best idea ever in a mmorpg "Besieged" as well as Campaigns and then many other elements that bring players together throughout the game's content ideas of which would take a long time to describe them all one example being Moblin Meebles/burrows,Einherjar or Assault etc etc.
people often talk about their fave game and content etc etc ,but FFXI has more than any game out there,likely because it is of course older than most games out there.

Thing is what OTHER games have been doing and still do is bring players together ONLY to kill some Boss or to clear some dungeon and no other reason.This is how shallow gaming has become in mmorpg's,a bunch of connect the dots with yellow markers over npc heads and VERY little to do with the MMO aspect of gaming.
It really appears that developers can call their game a MMO just because it has a login screen.

H0urg1ass

The two primary reasons that humans band together are for protection and procurement. 

If you can replicate the need to protect one another and drastically increase the profitability of each player by procuring goods in a group, then you won't need to force grouping, it will happen naturally.  Instead of designing a 24 person raid, design a really tough monster, but that monster only has two eyeballs and his eyes are very valuable for making a specific item.  So players will get just enough people together to kill the monster, but right on the edge because they don't want to have to split the profits too many ways.

It's much easier for a group of people to protect themselves against predators.  It's much easier for a group of people to cultivate land, herd animals, dig wells, sew furs together.  Rather than one person needing to be a jack of all trades, communities can have experts at a couple of things that serve the entire group.

Start by designing a world where everything in it is player made.  Then make the ingredients to build things require a lengthy process of gathering, refining, producing basic building blocks which then are used for more advanced procedures.  Do this in such a way that no one character can possibly do it all themselves as the skills necessary would take years to train.  This allows a character to specialize in skills needed by the group.

Then give the players a lot of space to live and build homes.  These homes are destructible by either other players or NPC monsters and must be protected, making it unwise to go it alone.  So now players start to gravitate towards each other and form communities because it's easier to do so and everyone benefits from everyone else.

mistmaker

I remember AO and AoC. In AO you get most XP when doing hard missions in a full group and stay together for a while. Or you grinded spots with fast spawning boss mobs. In AoC grinding camps in groups also because it was the fastest way to level. 

--> the fastest way to gain xp is content you can often and regularly do in groups because its too hard alone

quest systems are bad for groups. The content must be made for single persons and therefor are too easy to do in groups. The mission system in AO was a better design. If you are alone you can do easy missions, or sneak through as a leet (agent) ;-)

Kyleran

H0urg1ass said:

The two primary reasons that humans band together are for protection and procurement. 

If you can replicate the need to protect one another and drastically increase the profitability of each player by procuring goods in a group, then you won't need to force grouping, it will happen naturally.  Instead of designing a 24 person raid, design a really tough monster, but that monster only has two eyeballs and his eyes are very valuable for making a specific item.  So players will get just enough people together to kill the monster, but right on the edge because they don't want to have to split the profits too many ways.

It's much easier for a group of people to protect themselves against predators.  It's much easier for a group of people to cultivate land, herd animals, dig wells, sew furs together.  Rather than one person needing to be a jack of all trades, communities can have experts at a couple of things that serve the entire group.

Start by designing a world where everything in it is player made.  Then make the ingredients to build things require a lengthy process of gathering, refining, producing basic building blocks which then are used for more advanced procedures.  Do this in such a way that no one character can possibly do it all themselves as the skills necessary would take years to train.  This allows a character to specialize in skills needed by the group.

Then give the players a lot of space to live and build homes.  These homes are destructible by either other players or NPC monsters and must be protected, making it unwise to go it alone.  So now players start to gravitate towards each other and form communities because it's easier to do so and everyone benefits from everyone else.

You've almost described EVE's design perfectly. Except for not quite as much crafting interdependence EVE has everything you stated in its design.

H0urg1ass

Kyleran said:

H0urg1ass said:

The two primary reasons that humans band together are for protection and procurement. 

If you can replicate the need to protect one another and drastically increase the profitability of each player by procuring goods in a group, then you won't need to force grouping, it will happen naturally.  Instead of designing a 24 person raid, design a really tough monster, but that monster only has two eyeballs and his eyes are very valuable for making a specific item.  So players will get just enough people together to kill the monster, but right on the edge because they don't want to have to split the profits too many ways.

It's much easier for a group of people to protect themselves against predators.  It's much easier for a group of people to cultivate land, herd animals, dig wells, sew furs together.  Rather than one person needing to be a jack of all trades, communities can have experts at a couple of things that serve the entire group.

Start by designing a world where everything in it is player made.  Then make the ingredients to build things require a lengthy process of gathering, refining, producing basic building blocks which then are used for more advanced procedures.  Do this in such a way that no one character can possibly do it all themselves as the skills necessary would take years to train.  This allows a character to specialize in skills needed by the group.

Then give the players a lot of space to live and build homes.  These homes are destructible by either other players or NPC monsters and must be protected, making it unwise to go it alone.  So now players start to gravitate towards each other and form communities because it's easier to do so and everyone benefits from everyone else.

You've almost described EVE's design perfectly. Except for not quite as much crafting interdependence EVE has everything you stated in its design.

Well I was trying to describe the system while flying under the radar.  The prejudice against the three letters E V E around here is pretty thick.  Good catch tho!

Neanderthal

Mendel said:

I think the first thing any multi-player game needs to do to help achieve grouping is: slow down.  The pace of games is too fast.  There's no time between combat to do anything.  The games move at a pace where normal conversation is impossible with text, and this community seems to abhor the idea of VoIP to replace it.  Even then, the human brain has limits on how fast it can process input.  Games are capable of  generating that input faster than the human see-interpret-react speeds.

I strongly agree with this.  I've played games in which I grouped but even while grouped it felt more like I was solo because there was so little actual interaction with the other players.  It was constant combat spam so you never had a chance to actually interact.  It felt less like grouping and more like fighting solo alongside other players.

Iselin

H0urg1ass said:

The two primary reasons that humans band together are for protection and procurement. 

If you can replicate the need to protect one another and drastically increase the profitability of each player by procuring goods in a group, then you won't need to force grouping, it will happen naturally.  Instead of designing a 24 person raid, design a really tough monster, but that monster only has two eyeballs and his eyes are very valuable for making a specific item.  So players will get just enough people together to kill the monster, but right on the edge because they don't want to have to split the profits too many ways.

It's much easier for a group of people to protect themselves against predators.  It's much easier for a group of people to cultivate land, herd animals, dig wells, sew furs together.  Rather than one person needing to be a jack of all trades, communities can have experts at a couple of things that serve the entire group.

Start by designing a world where everything in it is player made.  Then make the ingredients to build things require a lengthy process of gathering, refining, producing basic building blocks which then are used for more advanced procedures.  Do this in such a way that no one character can possibly do it all themselves as the skills necessary would take years to train.  This allows a character to specialize in skills needed by the group.

Then give the players a lot of space to live and build homes.  These homes are destructible by either other players or NPC monsters and must be protected, making it unwise to go it alone.  So now players start to gravitate towards each other and form communities because it's easier to do so and everyone benefits from everyone else.

Good post.

But I wasn't really thinking of something like sandbox (which EVE very much is) vs. themepark. Everything you said describes the community building aspects of the former which is very good when it works and it attracts enough players.

But IMO, themeparks are the dominant type of MMORPG because they're more casually accessible to those who either can't or won't commit to the dedication that sandboxes require.

But themeparks can also be improved with community building events and activities. Of all the themparks I've played I really think Rift did this best with the zone invasions that change the nature of a zone while they're active. Other themeparks have these events on an occasional basis but Rift tried to do it as a core regular feature of the game. Hell, if left unchecked, the hordes that they spawn will kill quest NPCs locking out many quests in a zone until the players have dealt with the invasion.

The system isn't perfect but to me it shows a mentality that recognizes that MMOs are at their best when core features require large groups to deal with them. And being a themepark they also made it extremely easy to auto-join with no fuss simply by being near an open raid.

Themeparks can do it too in their own themeparky way.